Some experts say we’re more connected now than ever before due to the internet whilst others say we’re less connected because of the internet – so which is it?

In her new book The Village Effect: Why Face-to-Face Contact Matters, journalist and psychologist Susan Pinker argues that both views are correct. In this book she demonstrates the real and quantifiable benefits of human contact and explores how advances in technology have created new communities in our lives but at the expense of – as she puts it – the ‘village effect’.

Paul Durcan is one of the nation’s best-loved and most important poets. His latest collection is called ‘The Days Of Surprise’ and he was in studio this morning.

Paul Durcan will be reading at the dlr Mountains to Sea Book Festival on Wed 18th March. You can book tickets on www.mountainstosea.ie and for those of you in the West - he'll be reading at the Cúirt International Festival of Literature on 22nd April and you can book tickets for that from www.cuirt.ie.

The book is called The Days Of Suprise and it’s published by Harvill Secker at €14.99.

A.C. Grayling is one of the most prolific philosophers of our time. He is an impassioned defender of secular values and the founder of the New College for the Humanities in London, which he set up in 2012 to offer a new kind of education for undergraduates.

In his new book, The Challenge of Things, Grayling turns his attention to some of the most troubling phenomena of the twentieth-first-century, from drone warfare to the human rights record of China, and uses philosophical reflection as a guide through this difficult ethical terrain. And he joined Sean from our London studios this morning.

Clinton's Grand Strategy: US Foreign Policy in a Post-Cold War World - published by Bloomsbury.

Bill Clinton in campaigning for election in 1992 attacked George Bush Sr for being a ‘foreign policy president’. For Clinton the focus needed be on domestic matters and he had his hobby-horses of the economy and universal health care. In response President Bush remarked of Clinton and running mate Al Gore, “my dog Millie knows more about foreign policy than these two bozos”.

The American people had their say and the new president had to bleed himself in the world of geopolitics on the job.

The book Clinton’s Grand Strategy: US Foreign Policy in a Post-Cold War World has just been published by Bloomsbury and it looks at how US overseas relations changed over the two terms of the Clinton administration.

Its author, historian James D Boys, says in his conclusion “Whereas Woodrow Wilson made the world safe for democracy, Clinton sought to make the world safe for commerce", and he joined Sean this morning.

One of the great Irish colloquialisms has to be telling someone to cop on. We all know what it means and we all know who could do with a bit more of it. But can it be taught and would our children benefit from learning to have it? Would we?

Colman Noctor is a child and adolescent psychotherapist here in Dublin with some 18 years clinical experience of young people with emotional difficulties. Add to that his own personal experience as a parent and you have the basis for his thesis that not only can you teach children cop on it is a life skill.

And his book ‘Cop On: What it is and why your child needs it to survive and thrive in today’s world’ has just been published by Gill & Macmillan.

Colman will be signing copies of his book, Cop On, this Saturday, 7th March at 11am in Barker and Jones bookshop Naas.

She’s the flame-haired, straight-talking retail expert who transformed the fortunes of Harvey Nichols as well as campaigning to save the high street.

Her BBC series, Mary Queen of Shops, elevated failing businesses to the modern age and she was made a high-street tsar by the Tory party.

But she is also the woman who held her family together after her mother’s death and is now a poster-woman for same-sex marriage and her new series, Secret Shopper, is running on Channel 4 on Tuesday nights.

For many people, the death of a partner comes suddenly and without warning. When Jan Robinson’s husband died, she found herself at a loss as to what to do – how to organise a funeral, her husband’s money affairs, and, later, how to cope with crying and talking to children and grandchildren about her late husband.

She ended up writing a book called Tips From Widows, which is a collection of wisdom from other widows she met and spoke to during the grieving process.

Dr Valerie Bresnihan, a widow of four years, has been reading the book for us.